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Websleuths News

On the latest edition of Websleuths Radio we tackle the Rebecca Zahau murder case and the big mistake made in the autopsy report of the Las Vegas shooter.
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Canada - Katherine Janeiro, 20, Barrie, Ont, 10 Oct 1994

" Police say they’ve collected hundreds of pieces of evidence and have taken hundreds of witness statements.

Investigators are currently working closely with the Center of Forensic Science to re-examining some of the existing evidence. Police are hoping scientific advancements in forensic analysis will help lead to an arrest.

Experts in the fields of DNA analysis and DNA mixtures from Canada and the United States are assisting with the investigation.

Police believe there are people who are holding back key pieces of information out of fear and have also issued a $50,000-dollar reward for information that leads to an arrest in the case."

Barrie police initially investigated Janeiro's murder, but turned it over to provincial police in 1999. The OPP worked on the case for a dozen years and transferred it back to Barrie police February 2012, she said.

In 1994, the Examiner reported that woman's body was found lying on the floor, covered in blood with scratches on her face. Estranged from her boyfriend, she'd been at a pair of downtown bars most of Sunday night and early Monday morning.

Janeiro's telephone, which police believed may have contained her killer's number in its memory system, was stolen from the crime scene.

In March 1995, only a week after police announced they were looking for the phone, it was found in a creek not far from the murder scene. Its memory was intact, but brought police no closer to finding her killer.

Janeiro, whose nickname to her friends was 'Sport', left home at 16 and moved to Barrie with her boyfriend. A year later, she gave birth to a baby girl."

I think that watching the resolution unfold for cold cases is one the most fascinating topics on WS. The crowds may be thinner here, but the challenges faced by detectives are much greater, so that, ultimately, there is an extra measure of satifsaction when the case is finally solved.

I hope that truth will be revealed, with this case closed and off the books very soon.

It was a mild Sunday night on Oct. 9, 1994, when Katherine Janeiro was partying at bars in downtown Barrie.

Only 20 years old, the single mother of one was found dead in her basement apartment at 258 Dunlop St. W. less than 24 hours later.

She had been stabbed multiple times.

As the city police service’s criminal investigation team probed the circumstances surrounding the violent death, they learned Janeiro had invited some people she met downtown back to her apartment.
That decision may have been the fatal mistake that led to her death.

During their initial investigation, officers discovered Janeiro’s home telephone had been ripped from the wall and was nowhere to be found. The theory was the killer got rid of the phone because their number might be locked in the memory system.

One month after the murder, police believed they got a big break when they found the telephone in a nearby creek. The memory system was intact, but the discovery brought detectives no closer to solving the city’s most notorious homicide in years.

Investigators have sought the opinion of experts in various investigative and scientific fields, including DNA analysis and DNA mixtures, both here in Canada and the United States, the Barrie police website states.

But while science has been able to eliminate suspects in this unsolved mystery, it has yet to provide enough evidence to bring a suspect to court.

As in many unsolved homicides, investigators hope a witness will still come forward with that key piece of missing evidence.

Anyone with information on this homicide is urged to call the Barrie Police Homicide Unit tip line at 705-725-7025 ext. 2160, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS).